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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5345175" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 204: April 1994part 2/6Arcane Lore: Another set of silly spells, as has happened many an april before. The crazed book of Mog is one of those magic grimoires that tends to appear and disappear mysteriously when least wanted, and makes very little sense. If you see it and want the stuff within, make a copy. Gain Weight is near impossible to cast if you read the description. Balance a 50 pound cheese on your head? You'll do yourself an injury trying that. Mind you, if you succeed, the penalties inflicted are well worth it, especially as it's only a 1st level spell. Wake-up call is the reverse of sleep. This is one of those joke spells that isn't even worth memorising, for it's components look like they'd do the job quite adequately on their own. Macho's Uncontrollable Hideous Belching does exactly what it says on the tin. A humiliating and rather smelly way of making sure enemies can't stealth away. Watch you don't get indigestion yourself when casting it. Pelf's rancid arrow may be a fairly blatant bit of parody, but ruining all the supplies of the person you hit is a very nasty way to deal with them, particularly if you're undead and they're at the bottom of a dungeon. Starvation is so much crueler than killing them in combat. Hold Portal Open is the reverse of the usual hold portal. This is another one that seems useless initially, but really isn't. How many times have DM's screwed you over with one way or trapped doors that slam unexpectedly, leading you to have to find another way out. Hallucinatory Murrain is a silly pun name, and is another reversed spell. Rather than creating illusionary vegetation, it makes existing stuff look and smell manky. I can think of uses for this one too. This is proving to be a pretty good article really. Wall of Paper is also a bit silly, but not to be underestimated. It might not be that good an obstruction, but it sure beats spending several hours wallpapering a room. And after all, that's just the kind of convenience magic should be used for. It's ironic that the joke articles sometimes have stuff more suited to everyday use than the normal ones. Teleport without Awareness is just plain mean. Who knows where they'll end up. It doesn't even have a save either. If they don't have their own means of magical transportation, they'll be living in interesting times for ages after this. Power word, kill rodents is another one that sounds silly, but has plenty of practical value. One word'll get your house nice and clear of anything smaller than a rabbit in a jiffy. The value of being a specialist if you want to be a commercial wizard once again becomes apparent, as you can do quite a few more appointments per day that way. And so we bring this year's april fools section to a rather good end, that would work fine even without the humour. The plane truth: Name changes ahoy! Having introduced the brand new city of Sigil to us, now it's time to go back to more familiar locales. Or are they? The planes are infinite and multifarious, and the same place may have many names. And calling them the wrong ones in the wrong places will get laughter or baffled looks. Of course, we must try not to use the H word, any more than we use the D words, for it is naughty, and miss moral majority will give us a good spanking if she catches us at it. In hindsight this is a reminder that some of the changes they made were for sake of playability and the sheer joy of making cool <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> up, such as the gate-towns and the factions, but others were due to company politics and the frustrations that surrounded them. (Lady of pain? :Roll of thunder, organ music) It's also a reminder that despite concentrating on the outer planes, where alignment is one of the most important things in the multiverse, it actually had more moral greys, odd couples and compromises than most D&D settings in it's adventures. So this is another example of how you do teasers right, that sets my nostalgia glands a-secreting, and shows us that we can play D&D quite differently to the way the rules encourage you to go. Creative thinking: Hmm. An article on advice for developing new psionic powers, along with new actual powers. Well, like advice on other systems, this gives them a good reason to say the same kinda thing as they would on developing new spells, only with different spins. And more psionic crunch is always welcome. I have no objection to this. Course, much of this is by necessity DM fiat, with costs for new powers figured out by eyeballing existing ones with similar strength. The main solid rules here are how long it takes to do research, determing if a power should be a science or devotion, and a rather annoying one that seems to have been invented purely for game balance's sake so psionicists have to expend money the way magic-users would during the research process, which doesn't feel very thematically appropriate. Yeah, I find that mildly irritating. Whatever happened to eschewing material things. That aside, this seems pretty solid. Now let's see about the powers. Diagnose allows you to figure out what a disease is. Since Cell Adjustment can fix it for the same cost, without the preliminaries, and also gives you regeneration, I'm not very tempted by this.  Feature Dancing is the psionic answer to change self. This isn't too great either, because it's maintenance cost is per round, so extended deceptions don't seem very viable. Not hugely tempting, since there are better ways to disguise yourself. Tool, on the other hand, is a variant of body weaponry that you probably can find millions of uses for, many which will require you to stay in it for an extended period. Fortunately, it's cost is low enough for that to be feasible. Perfect for the imaginative player. Bonding is a variant on Charm Person. Again, it's probably a bit underpowered compared to the wizard's spell, but has plenty of interesting quirks. it would be ironic if psionicists are actually weaker at mind-control than wizards in some respects. Enter Dream is another one that may be a problem due to a maintenance time measured in rounds. Dreams can go on for quite a long time, and even with a little time dilation, I'd rather like to stick around more than an hour or two. Microkinesis lets your psionicist nick the role of a rogue almost as effectively as a wizard with Knock can. It may also reward inventiveness, but they concentrate entirely on it's lock-picking and trap disarming potential. Guess you'll have to make it worth the price with your mind again. So this is a collection that definitely seems rather conservative, particularly when contrasted with the equivalent spells. Maybe being able to use them more frequently'll balance that out in actual play. Not sure.</blockquote>

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